This is from a daily email of "Chicken Soup for the Soul", which I have had for a number of years. As we look at campaign rhetorics of governments needing to help people. it is an appropriate story. I know that not every person or family can be as self-sufficient as this family:

Willing To Pay The Price

When my wife Maryanne and I were building our Greenspoint
Mall hair salon 13 years ago, a Vietnamese fellow would stop by
each day to sell us doughnuts. He spoke hardly any English, but
he was always friendly and through smiles and sign language we
got to know each other. His name was Le Van Vu.

During the day Le worked in a bakery and at night he and his
wife listened to audio tapes to learn English. I later learned
that they slept on sacks full of sawdust on the floor of the back
room of the bakery.

In Vietnam the Van Vu family was one of the wealthiest in
Southeast Asia. They owned almost one-third of North Vietnam,
including huge holdings in industry and real estate. However,
after his father was brutally murdered, Le moved to South Vietnam
with his mother, where he went to school and eventually became a
lawyer.

Like his father before him, Le prospered. He saw an
opportunity to construct buildings to accommodate the ever-
expanding American presence in South Vietnam and soon became one
of the most successful builders in the country.

On a trip to the North, however, Le was captured by the
North Vietnamese and thrown into prison for three years. He
escaped by killing five soldiers and made his way back to South
Vietnam where he was arrested again. The South Vietnamese
government had assumed he was a "plant" from the North.

After serving time in prison, Le got out and started a
fishing company, eventually becoming the largest canner in South
Vietnam.

When Le learned that the U.S. troops and embassy personnel
were about to pull out of his country, he made a life-changing
decision.

He took all of the gold he had hoarded, loaded it aboard one
of his fishing vessels and sailed with his wife out to the
American ships in the harbor. He then exchanged all his riches
for safe passage out of Vietnam to the Philippines, where he and
his wife were taken into a refugee camp.

After gaining access to the president of the Philippines, Le
convinced him to make one of his boats available for fishing and
Le was back in business again. Before he left the Philippines two
years later en route for America (his ultimate dream), Le had
successfully developed the entire fishing industry in the
Philippines.

But en route to America, Le became distraught and depressed
about having to start over again with nothing. His wife tells of
how she found him near the railing of the ship, about to jump
overboard.

"Le," she told him, "If you do jump, whatever will become of
me? We've been together for so long and through so much. We can
do this together." It was all the encouragement that Le Van Vu
needed.

When he and his wife arrived in Houston in 1972, they were
flat broke and spoke no English. In Vietnam, family takes care of
family, and Le and his wife found themselves ensconced in the
back room of his cousin's bakery in the Greenspoint Mall. We were
building our salon just a couple of hundred feet away.

Now, as they say, here comes the "message" part of this
story:

Le's cousin offered both Le and his wife jobs in the bakery.
After taxes, Le would take home $175 per week, his wife $125.
Their total annual income, in other words, was $15,600. Further,
 his cousin offered to sell them the bakery whenever they could
come up with a $30,000 down payment. The cousin would finance the
remainder with a note for $90,000.

Here's what Le and his wife did:
Even with a weekly income of $300, they decided to continue
to live in the back room. They kept clean by taking sponge baths
for two years in the mall's restrooms. For two years their diet
consisted almost entirely of bakery goods. Each year, for two
years, they lived on a total, that's right, a total of $600,
saving $30,000 for the down payment.

Le later explained his reasoning, "If we got ourselves an
apartment, which we could afford on $300 per week, we'd have to
pay the rent. Then, of course, we'd have to buy furniture. Then
we'd have to have transportation to and from work, so that meant
we'd have to buy a car. Then we'd have to buy gasoline for the
car as well as insurance. Then we'd probably want to go places in
the car, so that meant we'd need to buy clothes and toiletries.
So I knew that if we got that apartment, we'd never get our
$30,000 together."

Now, if you think you've heard everything about Le, let me
tell you, there's more: After he and his wife had saved the
$30,000 and bought the bakery, Le once again sat down with his
wife for a serious chat. They still owed $90,000 to his cousin,
he said, and as difficult as the past two years had been, they
had to remain living in that back room for one more year.

I'm proud to tell you that in one year, my friend and mentor
Le Van Vu and his wife, saving virtually every nickel of profit
from the business, paid off the $90,000 note, and in just three
years, owned an extremely profitable business free and clear.

Then, and only then, the Van Vus went out and got their
first apartment. To this day, they continue to save on a regular
basis, live on an extremely small percentage of their income,
and, of course, always pay cash for any of their purchases.

Do you think that Le Van Vu is a millionaire today? I am
happy to tell you, many times over.

By John McCormack
from Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1993 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen